Author: SharkTrekker

It has been quite a while since I did one of these summary update posts (at least half a year now), so let’s get into this!

Kicking this post off; for this year of studies, I decided that it was time for me to take a more active role with responsibility at my university. Since Wednesday 22nd November 2017, I am now functioning as one of three course representatives for Year 2 Computer Games Development. Basically, I’m here as the first layer of the “student academic representation network” (there are then student voice reps (SVRs) and full-time student officers above me). I am here to represent all students in my year group – they can come to me with feedback that I can then bring up at meetings with other course reps and the course leaders to improve the quality of the course. Since getting into the role, I have taken part in an initial training event thingy, a course rep assembly (involving course reps across the University), and a course rep meeting (just Game Dev and Computer Science course reps and leaders). So far, it feels great to be part of this and I hope I can be an effective and contributing course rep!

This Saturday, I went to St Fagans with my parents! They went mainly for the bread, Bara Birth, since it is literally the best bread ever! I took some photos in the subsequent walk and tried to play around with them when I got home, doing the best I can with just a mid-range smartphone camera. Some came out pretty nice, although a lot of the finer details were somewhat ruined by JPEG compression. I did some post-processing on a few of them in Photoshop to improve them as much as I can. One thing notable about this trip was that the place has changed quite a bit since the last time I went. The front museum part has been modernised and expanded, and it looks great! And they also added this cafe/workshop (pictured below) building outside too!

Copyright Khalid Ali

Copyright Khalid Ali

Copyright Khalid Ali

Copyright Khalid Ali

Finally, my personal website is online! See it here at http://khalidali.co.uk. It will serve as my online portfolio and general hub. It’s source code is essentially a fork of Starfleet’s Path to 2265.

So I haven’t been making good on my Sunday updates in a while. In fact the last update was the 5th November! However, there are some big updates for today (Tuesday since I was busy this Sunday).

The website’s development is now being tracked and controlled with the version control solution Git, which in the simplest terms allows me to log every change I make to the website and reverse them if I made a mistake. It’s a huge safety net that gives me more peace of mind in case something goes wrong and effectively allows the core files of the website to be mirrored in the cloud somewhere. Git also allows me to branch the website into two separate solutions where I can work on multiple things without them interfering with each other. When its time to compile the final product, these branches would be merged into one with the differences of each branch carefully accounted for.

Traditionally branching is used to allow multiple people to work on one project at the same time, but I have used it to fork the website into two branches:

master: main website source. The layout and design of master is considered stable and I can add new website content without fear of issues.

designDev: design development source. Here I am free to experiment with layout and design changes without fear of messing up the content. When a compiled change is polished to the point I want to apply it to master, I can merge the two branches’ stylesheets so the changes can be rolled out to public view.

The GitHub repository for Starfleet’s Path to 2265’s complete code and assets is hidden (a necessity since the PHP code of the website contains sensitive information such as the MySQL database password etc.), but you can view master as it is by simply using the site as normal or view designDev‘s progress by navigating to it via the link under “Site development” on the homepage. Whilst version control for the website was not necessary, I think its a cool thing that can really help the website’s development in the long run! Practicing version control is also an industry gem for software and game development.

In other news; Ship Reviews has been renamed Ship Overviews, a decision made in order to reduce any “authoritative” connotations from my opinions. These overviews are intended to give a brief about the ship in canon or non-canon, some basic background information, my opinion on the ship, and (if applicable) how I integrated the design into the website. To launch the change, the overview of SS Valiant is now up! SS Polaris has also been delayed again due to time constraints.

There are a few upcoming changes/fixes as well. A gallery of the website’s development progress will be up in Articlessoon, intended to showcase how far this website has come! The search results are kinda messed right now and grossly out of date, so that needs fixing. Some layout fixes and improvements to the side menu will be rolled out soon as well (some of the first major things to come out of designDev).

First thing first: weekly updates will be on Sundays now since my week is getting busier and busier.

So after finally realising the issues with contrasting red and blue, the side colours are now red and medium grey for the time being. For now I think the colours look nice and modern, but it is likely going to change in the future.

A change that you will not notice from looking at the site is the upgraded search. I finally upgraded to using PHP data objects (PDO) instead of using raw MySQL calls. Chapter 1 has gotten a few updates too with the inclusion of UESPA-9 (FINALLY) and ship sideviews packed with the narrative.

UESPA-20 (SS Polaris) designing has been delayed for a week or so whilst I make changes to the website elsewhere. I am also working on my personal portfolio website as well, which is taking up some of my allocated website development timeslot within my week.

Anyway. So this is the second ship I’m designing for Starfleet’s Path to 2265. It is required for Chapter 2, and it’s a small UESPA ship designed to fill a void.

UESPA-20 (SS Polaris) of 2085.

The design borrows some elements from Masao Okazaki’s designs at The Starfleet Museum, with the nose being inspired by the Bison-class and its offshoots. But the rest of the design is still overall primitive compared to any 2150s ship. The design is not complex, and was developed very quickly. It actually started as two different design concepts I made about a month ago in preparation for its eventual inclusion in Chapter 2. My spec called for a small UESPA ship designed to be fast for its era and undertake early escort duties. As long as the ship was small, there were no real size specifications.

Original study drawings

Yesterday (after a month of waiting), I finally continued with the design by computerizing both drawings into scaled models with fixed deck heights. Minor design adjustments were made.

CAD designs (2D Design V2)

And now today, I jumped straight onto detail with the second model married to the upper structure of the first model. The nacelle was also moved to the vertical center of the ship

I tried to project a small design via large windows, and I made the design seem long to convey a seek and fast design. Hopefully, it will be finished in time for the next Thursday update!

Well, I’ve just finished my UESPA-9 design in time for today’s update! Take a look at the development of the design:

Late-August to mid-October 2017 development

I should make it clear than not everything about the design is finished. An orthographic and internal schematic is yet needed to give a complete picture, but this complete sideview will be enough to allow me to begin incorporating the design into the website fully. By the end of today, I should have most of the ship’s database entry done. By this time next week, I should also have a few paragraphs about the ship written for insertion into chapter 1. For now, you can read more about the design here!

Another significant addition to the website is a section of the (currently only UESPA) database dedicated to warp reactors. Since reactors are probably the single best way to signify technological development in starships, I decided it was time to put some attention there. Currently, information on the Cochrane-type fusion, Yoyodyne-type pulse fusion, and Cochrane II-series fusion reactors is present (which are written in chapter 1 and 2 to be the most prominent reactors in the mid-to-late 21st century). A Yoyodyne II-type pulse fusion reactor page will be done within the next few days to compliment the completion of the DY-732-class ship database entry next Thursday.

When I completed the draft to chapter 1 of the website’s History repot, I wrote the blog post “Rationalising and solving UESPA problems” to complement it and show some of the thought behind it. Today I have put up chapter 2, which mainly deals with the formation of the Earth Cargo Service (ECS) and reactor progress for the UESPA. I will not be writing a post that large on here for it. Just a brief.

So. The ECS was a major theme of two episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise (“Fortunate Son” and “Horizon”), where it is shown to be an agency responsible for governing the operations of Earth freighters. This chapter follows a similar sort of format to the first one, combining what we know canonically with my own creative approach of bringing it to life; explaining political, economic, and social reasons for the development of the ECS and contemporary ships.

I’ve also been experimenting with colours. I want the Red/Blue theme, but I want it to be easy on the eyes too.

The biggest addition is the first starship review, which is of USS Shenzhou from Star Trek: Discovery. All things considered, I gave it a weighting of 6.3/10. I should have the rest of the Federation background ships from the Battle of the Binary Stars done soon. Other than that, not much to report really.